National Post (National Edition)
Dropping the ball on airport screening
On Saturday night, I landed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, returning home from Orlando, Fla., after a 10-day holiday. (Impeccable timing, yes.) I was expecting long lines, chaotic crowds and detailed questions. Instead, my family and I had the fastest, most pain-free customs experience of our lives. It took us six minutes and 16 seconds to go from the back of the line to the baggage claim area.
This all seems a bit relaxed for the midst of a rapidly spreading deadly pandemic, no?
A smooth customs experience would normally be a good way to end a trip. And certainly no one wants to see the kind of problems seen of late at U.S. airports, with massive crowds packed into tight spaces for hours on end. But as Canada prepares to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic that is raging in Europe and likely so in the U.S., the screening at our border entry points is coming under intense, necessary scrutiny.
The federal government insists that all is well, of course. “We have enhanced screening measures in place at all international airports, as well as land/rail/marine ports of entry,” Public Safety Minister Bill Blair tweeted last week. “We are taking the necessary steps to ensure that Canadians are safe in the face of COVID-19.” At a cringe-inducing press scrum Sunday night in Ottawa, Tourism Minister Mélanie Joly and Justice Minister David Lametti flopped around helplessly under sharp questioning by the Globe’s Marieke Walsh about the numerous reports of Canadians getting into the country with no screening and without being given any information regarding self-isolation. Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec have all sent provincial officials into airports to ensure that public-health information is delivered to arriving passengers. Ontario should do the same.
A recap of our own experience may be instructive: we were processed by an automated kiosk with a touchscreen (that is hopefully being regularly cleaned). It scanned our passports and took photos of my wife and I — our children, being under 12, were exempt from photographing. Alongside the usual questions about value of purchased goods and whether we’ll be visiting a Canadian farm, there was a question asking whether we had recently visited Iran, Italy or China’s Hubei province. I (honestly) clicked no. The kiosk printed out a form, which I handed to a customs officer. He glanced at it, asked where we were returning from, looked at our passports for the barest moment, and welcomed us home. Like I said above, the entire process took barely six minutes.
No questioning about symptoms. No temperature screening. No information about mandatory 14-day self-isolation. No signage, or at least not obvious signage. No multi-language pre-recorded PA announcements with public health details. My wife did see a pamphlet listing COVID-19 symptoms, but nothing about self-isolation was noted. (Photos have circulated on Twitter claiming to show updated pamphlets given out at airports containing self-isolation information; we did not receive one on Saturday night.)
Does this sound adequate?
Blair isn’t lying, per se. I’m sure the screening is “enhanced” in the sense that there is now a question about travel to Italy, Iran or China. That is, technically, an enhancement. It is also a pretty feeble effort, especially when considered against the backdrop of rapidly escalating closures of businesses and services in Canada, with more disruptions likely in the coming hours and days. The Canadian health-care system operates at near-maximum capacity at all times, or even beyond it. If there is a sudden surge in COVID-19 patients, this could cause a catastrophic failure of the system along the lines of what’s occurred in Italy, where older citizens are being essentially triaged off so those with a better prognosis can be saved. This could easily happen here, and soon. Our efforts must reflect that reality.
Thus far, they don’t, or at least not evenly across all the governments. The provinces were closing schools and meeting places while Joly and Lametti told Canadians how great everything was going at the airports.
On Monday morning, the border services agency tweeted that all the automated kiosks would now inform arriving passengers that they were expected to self-isolate. That’s good. But it’s also days late, at a time when time is of the essence. Tens of thousands of Canadians have returned to this country in recent days, some no doubt spurred by the government’s suggestion that they do exactly that, immediately. How many drove to a grocery store or restaurant first before going home, only to realize hours or days later, after reading or watching the news, that they were supposed to isolate themselves? This is a major failure by our federal officials. Let’s all hope it doesn’t prove a costly one.